Lib at Large: The vision and determination of 142 Throckmorton's Lucy Mercer

IN ITS 10TH anniversary year, Mill Valley's 142 Throckmorton Theatre remains a work in progress. And Lucy Mercer, its founder and executive director, wouldn't have it any other way. She's like an artist who keeps adding brush strokes to a masterpiece that will never be finished.

"Every time you go back and touch something you give it a little more life," she told me one day this week. "So you have to go back and touch things again."

I was in Mill Valley to take a look at the new performance space she's putting in a former retail store beside the entrance to the main theater. It's a high-ceilinged room that will fit about 40 people for chamber music and jazz concerts, speakers' salons, film screenings and other intimate gatherings. Resident artist and set designer Steve Coleman is giving it his magical touch, decorating it with the same kind of faux Corinthian columns and romantic neoclassical imagery that makes the main theater so enchanting.

"It's a small space that allows you to try things," Mercer said. "It's definitely a work in progress, and that's the way it should always be, a creative room to develop things in."

While that work is under way, she's launched a free chamber music concert series at noon on Wednesdays in the small alcove opposite the new space. Hosted by Joe Bloom, it's her anniversary present to the community she serves so gracefully and well, bringing people together through the arts. The day I was there, an overflowing audience of mostly retired folks turned out to hear a trio of musicians from the San Francisco Opera Orchestra perform pieces by Dvorak, Beethoven, Kodaly and Max Reger. It was a gorgeous day, and the music floated through the darkened main theater and outside into the balmy Mill Valley afternoon.

"I love this about working here," Mercer said, smiling. "I can hear it when I'm upstairs in my office."

A former mortgage broker with no experience in the entertainment business when she started this venture in 2003, she took a huge risk, selling her Mill Valley house to buy and restore the town's old Odd Fellows Hall, transforming it into the jewel-box theater it is now.

This is also the 100th anniversary of the building, which was originally a silent movie house that also presented vaudeville acts and stars of the day such as Charlie Chaplin. Mercer has a Chaplin poster on the wall outside her office in honor of the Little Tramp.

In its current incarnation, more than 50,000 people a year pass through its doors to see local talent as well as major stars such as Robin Williams, Dana Carvey, Mort Sahl, Woody Allen, Sammy Hagar, Bob Weir, Rita Coolidge and on and on and on. Most small towns couldn't imagine having big-time performers like that in their own backyard.

Comedian Mark Pitta, who's Tuesday comedy night is one of the theater's biggest success stories, calls Mercer "his guardian angel." She gave him his own show nine years ago when his career was at a low ebb and has had his back ever since.

"They say nice guys finish last, but she's nice and she's on the top of my list of important people," he says. "There's no way my show would have lasted nine years without her." Comic Rick Overton calls 142 Throckmorton "my favorite place to work in the world."

This month, the Marin County Board of Supervisors honored the theater with an anniversary commendation that celebrates the "vision and determination" of its founder. As an example of how beloved the place has become, a $150-a-ticket anniversary show and dinner on March 29 sold out in two days.

Because it has become such an important part of Marin's artistic and cultural life, regulars have been known to refer to it simply as "142," or "the Throck." That familiarity makes it easy to forget how sketchy the whole enterprise was at the start.

"In the beginning people were saying, 'Oh, no, it's gonna be impossible,'" Mercer recalled. And for a while it looked as if the naysayers were right. She and her psychologist husband, Danny Slomoff, kept the theater limping along on their dwindling pocket book until a fundraising campaign came to the rescue with $500,000 to tide it over until Mercer formed a nonprofit three years ago and turned to the community for help.

"We said, 'We really need your support,' and it's grown from there," she said. "It's still conservative, 25 percent of our overhead, but 25 percent is 25 percent. It allows us to do some outreach and programs that give to the community."

In addition to the theater's comedy, music and theater bills, the Throckmorton Youth Performers put on three impressive productions each year. A conversation series has featured Huey Lewis, Amy Tan and Isabelle Allende. Community outreach offers low-price ticket options, classes and workshops, scholarships and internships. The Throckmorton lobby has been turned into a gallery that exhibits the work of local visual artists.

Asked to look back on some of her more memorable evenings of the past decade, Mercer remembers heartwarming shows by folk icons Odetta and Richie Havens and world music giant Hamza el Din that turned out to be among the last performances of their lives.

Mercer once said that belief creates the world. But it's been her dogged determination and perseverance that has gotten 142 Throckmorton through its first 10 years.

"It's not like there was any miracle or anything," she said. "You just get up the next day and figure something out. I have as many highs and lows as anybody else, but the real takeaway from all this is to just keep at it."